Not This August —
C. M. Kornbluth

C.
M. Kornbluth’s 1955
Not
This August
is a standalone novel of what was then the near future.

April
17, 1965: the bitter war between the United States and its
allies—essentially just Canada by this stage of the war—and the
combined forces of People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union
ends with a glorious victory! But not for the US. America has been
invaded, its armies crushed, its government given no choice but to surrender.

In
the aftermath of unconditional surrender, the United States of
America is swept away, replaced by the North
American People’s Democratic Republic. What this means for former
Americans is not clear.

Sovereign —
April Daniels
Nemesis, book 2

2017’s
Sovereign
is the second novel in April Daniels’ Nemesis series.

Less
than a year after super-powers were thrust on her, Danny
“Dreadnought” Tozer seems to be finding her feet as a superhero
and as a person. She and her lawyer have a cunning scheme to recreate
the effectively defunct Legion Pacifica under Danny’s control.
Danny is also on the verge of being legally emancipated from her
abusive parents. Not bad for someone only barely old enough to drive.

With
everything under control, it seems like the perfect time for a
working holiday at a global convention for superhumans. This is, of
course, exactly when her enemies unite against her.

The Song of Hadariah —
Alisse Lee Goldenberg
Dybbuk Scrolls Trilogy, book 1

Alisse Lee Goldenberg is an award-winning author of Horror, Young
Adult Paranormal Romance, and Young Adult Fantasy fiction. She is
currently working on three series:
The
Sitnalta Series, The Dybbuk Scrolls,
and
The
Bath Salts Journals
(co-authored
with An Tran). She has her Bachelors of Education and a Fine Arts
degree, and has studied fantasy and folklore since she was a child.
Alisse is also a voice actress living in Toronto with her husband
Brian, and their triplets Joseph, Phillip, and Hailey.

2017’s
The
Song
of Hadariah
is
the first volume in Alisse Lee Goldenberg’s
Dybbuk
Scrolls Trilogy: Book 1

Seventeen-year-old
Carrie has a lot of important decisions to make; her choices could
shape her entire adult life. When she saves a beleaguered fox from
her dog, she does not think that she is making one of those Big
Decisions. Yet her impulsive act of kindness turns out to be not just
Big, but the Biggest.

Red Girls —
Kazuki Sakuraba

Kazuki
Sakuraba’s
Red
Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas
was
published as
Akakuchibaki
no Densetsu
in 2006. The 2015 English language edition was translated by Jocelyne Allen.

No
one would have thought that the foundling Manyo was marked for great
things. A mysterious mountain-dwelling clan had left the infant in
Benimidori, an insignificant rural village. Fostered by a local
family, she grew up as just another rustic in a small town notable
only for the old Akakuchiba iron works and some recent shipyards. But
fate had other plans for Manyo.

The Takeover —
G. C. Edmondson & C. M. Kotlan

C.
G. Edmondson and C. M. Kotlan’s 1984 novel
The
Takeover
is
a near-future thriller, written in those long-forgotten days when
Americans were terrified that the Russians might somehow subvert
America’s most basic institutions. Of course,
these
days we can look back and laugh at such ludicrous fears.

The
Russian military adventure codenamed
Cassandra
was intended to exploit a moment of American vulnerability and win
concessions for the Soviet Union. Even
Cassandra’s
architect, Undersecretary of Agriculture and Commerce Pikusky, didn’t
expect his little project to succeed to the extent it did. The
Soviets wanted trade concessions. They got total conquest!

Seven Days in May —
Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey II

Fletcher
Knebel and Charles W. Bailey’s 1962’s Seven
Days in May is
a best-selling political thriller set in the early 1970s.

The
struggle over Iran brought the Americans and Soviets to the brink of
all-out war. Republican President Edgar Frazier’s decision to
accept a divided Iran was reasonable under the circumstances (it
averted nuclear war) but it was political suicide for him1.

As
his Democratic Party replacement Jordan Lyman discovers, sometimes
success is just the opportunity to fail on a more epic scale.

Dreadnought —
April Daniels
Nemesis, book 1

2017’s
Dreadnought
is the first novel in April Daniels’ Nemesis
series. It’s the first book I have read by this author and it will
not be the last.

Fifteen-year-old
Danny went shopping. Buying nail polish, which was their coping
mechanism for life with a domineering father who would react with
rage and abuse if he were to discover that his son Danny is actually his daughter Danny.
What Danny got out of the shopping trip was a starring role as
“vulnerable bystander in a battle between two superhumans,” a
bystander cowering as the mighty Dreadnought fights to the death with
villain Utopia.

Danny
was lucky not to be reduced to a sooty outline on a wall. Their luck
does not stop there.

A Place So Foreign and Eight More —
Cory Doctorow

Cory
Doctorow probably requires no introduction, but a
link to his Wikipedia entry seems prudent.
Doctorow’s connection to Waterloo Region is, as is so often the
case, via education. He attended the University of Waterloo in the
1990s and again in the 2000s.

2003’s A
Place So Foreign and Eight More is a collection of Doctorow stories. I
seem to have misfiled my copy of this but no worry: large portions of
it are available online1.

Hiromu Arakawa
Fullmetal Alchemist, book 1

Viz’
Fullmetal
Alchemist (3-in-1 Edition), Volume 1 includes
Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the original Japanese manga [1]. Story and art
are by Hiromu Arakawa; English translation by Akira Watanabe; English
adaptation, by Jake Forbes and Egan Loo; touch-up art & lettering
by Wayne Truman. The original manga appeared in 2003. The English
translation appeared in 2011.

Wait!
Are you confused yet? As my editor was confused? “You already
reviewed Full Metal Alchemist!” Yes, but I reviewed the second volume in the series, not the first. Which was checked
out and never returned to
Kitchener Public Library.

On
a war-wracked continent, two young brothers wander from town to town.
Although Edward Elric is only fifteen and Alphonse Elric is just
fourteen, both are skilled alchemists. Indeed, their skill is only
outmatched by their boldness, which is why they are searching for the
Philosopher’s Stone.

The
Stone might be able to give Ed back his missing arm and leg and Al
back his missing body…

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps —
Kai Ashante Wilson

Kai
Ashante Wilson’s 2015 The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is
set in the same universe as his A
Taste of Honey (reviewed here).

Long
ago, the gods fled Earth, leaving their mortal offspring behind. The
demigods are too weighted by flesh to ascend, but have great powers
in the mortal realm.

One
demigod, the Captain, uses his gifts to lead a company of
mercenaries. Demane, also semi-divine, is one of his soldiers. Demane
is hopelessly smitten with the Captain and follows him despite having
no real taste for the life of a mercenary. His fellow soldiers are
wary of him; they call him a sorcerer, even though he tries to
conceal his gifts.

Both
men’s gifts will be needed to get the mercenaries and the merchants
they are guarding through the Wildeeps. Well, at least some of the mercenaries and some of the merchants.

The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award Anthology —
A. N. Editor

honors under-read science
fiction and fantasy authors with the intention of drawing renewed
attention to the winners. The award was initiated in 2001 by the
Cordwainer Smith Foundation.

That’s
a fine goal. Yet, even though the award has been given every year
since 2001, the award’s website has not
been updated since 2012. That’s not the way to draw attention
to the honoured works. At least the Wikipedia entry seems to be up-to-date.

Something
else the Rediscovery Award people have never done, to my knowledge,
is commission a Rediscovery-theme anthology. If they did, it might
look something like this:

Triptych —
J. M. Frey

2011’s
Triptych is a standalone science fiction novel by J. M. Frey.

Forced
to flee their dying homeworld [1], the aliens found new homes on
Earth. In stark contrast to the experiences of pretty every previous
wave of refugees in the history of our planet, the governments of
Earth, working through the UN, organized a sensible, effective effort
to integrate the aliens into human society. Key to this effort are
the Specialists who act as cultural ambassadors to the aliens.

Sea of Shadow —
Fuyumi Ono
The Twelve Kingdoms, book 1

1992’s
portal fantasy Sea
of Shadow is the first volume in Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve
Kingdoms series. The 2007 English language edition was translated by Alexander
O. Smith, and Elye J. Alexander.

Yoko
Nakajima’s oddly coloured hair, lighter than any proper Japanese
person’s hair should be, makes her an object of suspicion to her
parents and schoolmates. It’s true that her hair has been its
present colour since birth, and that she is to all appearances a
normal, hardworking student and dutiful daughter. But isn’t that
just the sort of facade a covert nonconformist would adopt? Her
reluctance to assimilate by dying her hair black only underlines here
oddity. Although if she did colour her hair, that would also be bad
(her school forbids hair-colouring [1]).

But
things could get worse, and do. Accosted by a stranger, given a magic
sword and the ability to use it, attacked by monsters, Yoko is
transported from Japan to the strange world of the Twelve Kingdoms.

Miranda and Caliban —
Jacqueline Carey

Jacqueline
Carey’s Miranda
and Caliban is
a standalone retelling of Shakespeare’s novelization of Forbidden
Planet,
which for some reason he called The Tempest.

Determined
to have revenge on his usurping brother Antonio and Antonio’s ally,
the King of Naples, Prospero has retreated to a deserted island to
hone his magical skills. Usurping the witch Sycorax’s legacy for
his own, he is determined to use every resource at his disposal to
punish his enemies.

This
book does not tell Prospero’s story. Shakespeare already did that.
It focuses on his naïve daughter Miranda.

H.
H. Holmes’ 1942 mystery
Rocket
to the Morgue
is a sequel to 1940’s Nine
Times Nine
.
In
Nine
Times Nine
,
Detective Inspector Terry Marshall, assisted by Sister Ursula of the
Sisters of Martha of Bethany, solved a locked-room mystery. In
Rocket,
the intrepid duo will confront something far more vexing:

Aventine —
Lee Killough

1981’s
Aventine is Lee Killough’s sole short-story collection to date. The stories
share a common setting: Aventine, an artists community on a distant
world. At least, that is how the inhabitants like to see themselves.
The truth is darker.

Far-Seer —
Robert J. Sawyer
Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, book 1

Many
science fiction writers (Canadians in particular, because Canada) are
not especially outgoing and thus not inclined to actively promote
themselves (one reason why I try do that for them.. With one
noteworthy exception: a former Waterloo resident and past
Edna-Staebler-Writer-in-Residence [1] named Robert J. Sawyer, who, if
he ever suffered from this common debility, managed to overcome it.
As a result, his online bio is sufficiently voluminous that I find
myself paralyzed by choice. What, if anything, to quote? So I will
just link to the
ten-thousand-word Sawyer version. Enjoy!

The
dinosaurs may have perished on Earth, but their descendants live on,
on the habitable moon of a distant gas giant [2]. The intelligent
carnosaurs known as Quintaglios have no inkling of their past.
Indeed, their grasp of the present is shaky. As far as they are
concerned, they live on a vast island floating down a vaster river.
They do not know that their world is a sphere or that the body their
religion worships is the greater world around which theirs orbits.

Endurance —
Yoshiki Tanaka
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, book 3

1984’s
Endurance is the third volume in Yoshiki Tanaka’s MilSpaceOpera manga series,
Legend
of the Galactic Heroes.
The 2016 English language edition was translated by Daniel Huddleston.

Two
civil wars have ended; both the Galactic Empire and its deadly enemy,
the Free Planets Alliance, are at peace. Reinhard uses the respite to
consolidate his control over the Empire, becoming Emperor in all but
formal title.

Dissidence —
Ken MacLeod
The Corporation Wars, book 1

The
Corporation Wars: Dissidence is
the first volume in Ken MacLeod’s Corporation
Wars series. It is one of two books from the series that were nominated
for this year’s Prometheus Award. Due to lack of time, it is the
only one of the two that I will be reviewing.

Illicit
drone warfare for the shape of the human future is all fun and games
until, as Carlos the Terrorist found out, your allies turn on you and
frame you for an atrocity—your enemies work out where you are—and
someone drops a building on your head. Player One has left the game.
Not completely out (the building was full of cryogens and you were
flash frozen) but out for several centuries.

Fast
forward those few centuries and medical advances have made death a
curable condition.